Here’s a photo of the final piece before the glass and frame went on. I’ll show you some of the steps along the way.

An early sketch before I’d decided on the line-up and redrew the character in the ski mask.

After adding color to the characters, cutting them out, and inking all of their edges, I added some paper armature to the backs to keep them rigid. This also gave me more material to tie into for the paper ‘posts’ attaching them to the background.

I pulled out an old trick for the numbers. I wanted them clean and well spaced, and done by hand. The matte board was too thick for a light box, so I printed out the numbers and made a carbon-transfer with pencil; shading in the reverse of the print and drawing the contours on to the board.

I made a digital version (from the hand-drawn characters) and there are prints for sale!

Thanks for checking out my work, and check out what they’re up to at 555!